Mommin' It Up since 2004!
It’s time to announce the big winners of this:
The winners, as selected by the mighty Random Number Generator, are…
Jared at DadThing (how cool is it that a DUDE won??)
and
Sarah (attygirl)!
Congratulations and thanks to all who entered! If I can’t curb my CVS addiction, I may have one of these giveaways every month!
Now that I’ve become hopelessly addicted to got the hang of couponing at CVS, I’ve decided to try my hand at making Walgreens pay me to shop there. It’s not as easy as the CVS ExtraCare programs but it can be done! So, last month, I read Money Saving Mom’s Walgreens 101 primer and did one of their rebates in their EasySaver Rebate Catalog. I paid about $4 out-of-pocket for a couple of items (I used coupons to buy them) and was eligible for $6 in rebates. Not too bad but nothing spectacular. However, if you get your rebate on a Walgreens gift card instead of having them mail you a check, they give you an additional 10% of your rebate total. So actually I got $6.60 on my gift card, which I was excited to receive on New Year’s Eve!
This was not a bad start, but this week I really amped up my savings. Walgreens also has a program called Register Rewards which is similar to CVS’ ExtraCare Bucks. They usually only offer Register Rewards on a couple of items per week, and the Register Reward is a COUPON for a certain amount off of your next order. It isn’t exactly like “Walgreens Money” but it’s close enough. Anyhoo, this week Walgreens was selling a children’s Dimetapp for $4 and offering a $4 Register Reward. Woohoo! This was made sweeter by the fact that they had $2 off Dimetapp printable coupons at dimetapp.com. WHICH I printed 4 of. So 4 different times, I bought the Dimetapp, paid $2.77 including tax, and got $4 Register Rewards back. I then used those Register Rewards to buy things that I am going to get rebates on. For example: Glade Scented Oil Candle refill packs are on sale 2/$5. If you buy four, you also get a $4 rebate ($4.40 if you choose to put your rebate on a gift card.) Well little old me just happened to have four $1.50 off a refill coupons, so my four refills cost me $4 – just the amount of my register reward! So I paid only tax (on my new Walgreens gift card!) for them, and I am getting back $4.40!
Here’s me dreaming of my rebates…
To make the deal even SWEETER, Walgreens also had Glade Scented Oil Candle Holders on sale buy one, get one free this week. Well, I also happened to have five or six “buy one get one free” coupons for those as well, so this week I hit a few Walgreens and got 10 Glade Scented Oil Candle Holders for FREE! Woohoo! (Which is why I am giving them away!)
I did most of my shopping on Sunday the 30th, before I had received my rebate gift card in the mail, so I did spend about $8 out-of-pocket (because you can’t use the Register Rewards you earn on a product to do the same deal again, so I paid out-of-pocket for the Dimetapp), but I am getting back almost $20 in rebates on the items I purchased, PLUS I have all that great stuff and all those FREE candles! So I think I did pretty well! Although CVS is still my first love, if Walgreens is going to pay me to take stuff out the door, I will gladly do so!
For more great Super Savings Saturday stories, head over to Money Saving Mom. And let me say again that if you haven’t purchased her Supermarket Savings 101 class yet, do it! It is very affordable and will pay for itself in a heartbeat. You can check it out or purchase it here!
Oh, and don’t forget to enter my contest! Comments close tomorrow night!
A couple of weeks ago, Emily posted asking for advice on what she’s in for with having a second baby. A lot of you responded reassuringly that she was going to be just fine! And I’ve no doubt she will be!! Then the other day, I got this query from a reader named Jen:
“I’m halfway through my second pregnancy, so i’m currently contemplating what two kids will really mean (ie. “what the heck was i thinking?!?!?!â€) i think you should do a blog about all the little tips for us moms going from one kid to two. =)”
Well, I don’t know if I have any tips per se, but I thought it might be at least interesting to share with you about what it was like for ME to go from having one kid to two. I thought it was pretty challenging. I think that obviously the distance in age between your kids has something to do with it, but I’m not sure what the magic number is as far as age range goes to make it “easier” to go from one kid to two. My kiddos are two years and nine months apart (that’s right, it was “Happy 2nd Birthday Joshua! We just made you a sister!”) and I was realllllyyy hoping to have Joshua potty trained by the time Sophie came along, but that really crashed and burned. So, I had two in diapers for awhile, and then I had the constant fun of trying to get Joshua on & off the potty while I had a baby attached to my boob. This of course happened about 47 times a day. His bladder and her need to nurse were perfectly in sync! I am not exaggerating!! (ok the 47 times part was a bit of an exaggeration. But it was still just about every time he had to pee.)
While the whole nursing-potty thing was logistically difficult, the hardest thing for me to deal with overall was having to care for Joshua’s basic needs when I was SO EXHAUSTED from being up with Sophie all night. I couldn’t nap when Sophie napped during the day, like I did when Joshua was a baby. (Not that he ever kept me up all night. He was way too easy!) I remember one day when Sophie was 4 or 5 weeks old, my friend Megan & her little boy came over to visit and bring Christmas goodies. Well, Sophie had been up every hour on the hour the night before, and I was just a mess. If Megan hadn’t been there I might have just gone out in the cold and laid down in the middle of my busy street and let nature take its course. Those were some tough days, but thankfully I was too out of it to have much of a memory of them now.
Now that Sophie is one, and crazy, and very mobile, my biggest challenge is to keep peace between the two kids. Joshua is constantly getting irritated that his sister is messing up his train track, or chewing on his toys, or something of that nature. But, often, they really enjoy each other and it is so sweet to watch! They love to chase each other around, and every morning when we come downstairs, Sophie howls with laughter as Joshua comes down the steps behind her. It is incredibly heart-warming (sorry that is the only word I can think of to describe it!) It’s nice to know that Joshua will never remember a time when Sophie wasn’t a part of our family. I hope that they will grow up to be good friends, just like my older nerds brothers and I did.
So, there ya go, Jen (and Emily). Once you get over the shock of having a baby that is commpletely and totally different from your first child, it’s pretty great to have two little boogers running around. And Em, just think, it’ll be TWICE the BLOG FODDER!